I first laid eyes on Jennifer Herrema at a Weird War show in the fall of 2003. She crawled on stage in the middle of a song called "If You Cant Beat Em, Bite Em," and began rapping the refrain in a hoarse, smoke-cured rasp that made the beer bottles dance on the counter. She had a crazy tan and overgrown peroxide bangs from behind which peered the cutting amber eyes of a shewolf. Her eyebrows were bleached albino blond and her eyelashes weighed down by thick white goo. ("Liquid paper," a friend guessed with a shudder; I later discovered she uses Chanel lash conditioner).

The overall effect was unnerving. She looked fierce, alien, and terminally sexy. Those in the know have long been acquainted with Herrema and are mindful of the role she played in the 90s indie music underground. At the tail end of the 80s she formed the coed punk blues duo Royal Trux with guitarist Neil Hagerty, and in the process created the blueprint for current buzz acts the White Stripes, the Kills and the Raveonettes. As far as boy-girl rock & roll conspiracies go, Herrema and Hagerty were the real deal: a damaged Bonnie and Clyde pair with a truly dangerous vibe. Theyd met in D.C. when Herrema was barely 16, and moved to New York together. They developed an intense artistic partnership, discovered junk, and wrote harrowing songs that drew as much from punk, rock and blues as jazz and primal scream therapy.

Herremas androgynous style pretty much set the cannon for the heroin chic aesthetic that ruled the NYC fashion scene at the time; she was cast alongside Kate Moss in CK One perfume ads and starred in fashion pictorials. Virgin Records was wowed enough to extend Herrema and Hagerty a three-album deal, but lore has it that the corporate wigs grew so horrified at the music the band kept turning in that they paid them a third of a million dollars to nullify their contract. Royal Trux slipped back below the radar and trucked on until 2000. Then, while on tour, Herrema found out that her father had terminal cancer. She moved to West Virginia to nurse him and stayed by his side for the following four years.

Drugs reentered the picture; the band fractured permanently. It was only last fall that she emerged from the ordeal with a new record, a new band, and a renewed lust for life. She now lives in Huntington Beach, where she bought a house minutes away from the ocean and took up surfing. Since September shes been touring and performing under the moniker RTXa collapsed spelling of Royal Trux. ("I took the letters RTX and gave Neil OYALU," Herrema says.) The band includes two young musicians, Jaimo Welch and Nadav Eisenman, who have been helping her engineer her comeback.

The fruit of their musical partnership came out last year on indie imprint Drag City: its titled Transmaniacon (after a Japanese comic and a Blue yster Cult song) and bears the dedication "in loving memory of my dad." Its a classic rock record as warped and dark and tantalizing as only Herrema could muster. Her low, nasally growl is uniquely suited for the pagan stomp of tracks like "Low Ass Mountain Song" and "Heavy Gator." Live, she remains a total sensation. The way she stalks the stage in her shit-kicker snakeskin boots, a cigarette burning close to her lip at all times, is pure outlaw rock & roll bravura. She could well bottle it and sell it, for there would be many takers.

I recently met with Herrema for an interview at a little Mexican joint down the street from her house. It was a lovely, warm winter day and entire families were sunning themselves on the beach. Parking my car, I spotted her graceful elongated silhouette slinking against the azure sky.
Up close shes six feet tall and every inch as striking as youd expect. Shes 35 now, which means that there are tiny spidery lines under her eyes, but she otherwise has the allure of a slender adolescent punk: long fingers, long legs in skinny beat-up jeans, lean torso wrapped in a fur-trimmed hoodie. Animal fangs worn on a string around her neck, animal pelts, silver, denim, turquoise: the getup of a Western outlaw.

Though she continues to modelshe recently shot a print campaign for L.A. jeans couturier Henry DuarteI personally would love to see her act in a mad, operatic Werner Herzog movie, preferably opposite a young Klaus Kinski.

"Im sorry if Im being a little incoherent," she apologized at the top of our talk. She explained that shed had spent the previous night in San Diego, working on a photo shoot for Britains I.D. magazine, and pointed to her bottle of Dos Equis: "I woke up with a monster hangover and this is my hair-of-the-dog-that-bit-you remedy." Over Mexican beer and fish tacos, we spent a couple of hours talking about her latest album, Royal Truxs legacy, the origins of her inimitable sense of style, and her views on marriage, feminism, rock & roll and sex appeal.

SD: How is your current record different from the stuff you used to do with Royal Trux?

JH: The sounds of the new record are kind of high-range and really bright. Its a forward-momentum soundthats how I describe it. I wrote these songs with Jaimo on guitar: I would just play a simple riff and he would start figuring out what I was talking about. That took a whole yeartrying to learn a new form of communication with your guitar player. I would tell him, "this is the sound." And then I would instruct him to tweak it, but without using any reference points. Without saying, "hey, make it sound like that." I wanted this to be devoid of any reference points.

SD: Would you say RTX is mostly your own project?

JH: I have a sense of direction with this band, but Im wide open to suggestions too. Im not gonna say its a democracy because democracy pretty much leads to mediocrity, I think. It never works when you try to please way too many people and accommodate too many different ideas. But I do want everybody to write together ultimately. I really dont want to have to be writing different peoples parts. I would like this to be a collaborative experience.

SD: On your recent tour, you had Paz Lenchantin [of Zwan and A Perfect Circle] play bass with RTX. Is this the first time you've collaborated with a girl on stage?

JH: Yeah. Ive never played with umanother female. Shes a really good musician and a really good person. Shes pretty much the only person that Ive ever met and connected with in a simple, straightforward way, with no subtext to it.

SD: What are your feelings about the legacy of Royal Trux? You & Neil Hagerty created a body of work over 13 years that is currently mined by an entire crop of new bands. The Kills and the White Stripes are the most obvious names that come to mind.

JH: I think its cool. The similarities that I see thus far are not on a totally superficial level, but one that goes just below the surface. If anything that Ive done in the past inspires someoneregardless of whether I like it or I dont like itthats cool. And theres a lot to Royal Trux that one could take from. I think however that its always important to remember where your sources and influences came from, and treat that stuff respectfully. I just dont think that happens as much nowadays.

SD: How does the current indie music scene compare to your experience of it in the 90s?

JH: Theres a new sense of desperation; it all feels so competitive in nature. I dont know if this makes sense, but nowadays every band wants to claim some territory in the pop culture arena and ensure that they are the quintessential stoner rock band, or the quintessential garage band. And I think thats the worst thing you could ever do. Wanting that sense of security defeats a musicians purpose, which isjust keep yourself excited, keep moving forward as your life moves forward. Instead I feel like theres a lot of stagnation and desperation.

Im not saying that all bands are like that, by the way.

SD: How do you feel about indie bands rushing to secure corporate tie-ins (scoring TV ads, playing corporate parties, etc.) to prolong their 15 minutes of fame?

JH: I dont think theres anything wrong with pretty much doing anything, as long as you know why you want to do it.

SD: You have such a unique sense of style, which is a big part of your stage persona. How did that develop?

JH: Fortunately, or maybe unfortunately for me, theres not too much distinction between being on stage and not being on stage.

I kind of just dress the way I dress all the time. And that came about at an early age. I was a total tomboy. And I cant tell you the roots of what made me, as a little girl, hate when my mom put dresses on me, and why I always wanted to wear jeans! Growing up I always played sports. I played basketball; I played softball; I played soccer up until I was 16 and coached boys soccer right after high school. I was really athletic and kind of dressed for that. It felt normal to me. I love how dresses look on other people, and I will occasionally wear a dress. I wore a dress to my sisters wedding but it took forever to find one that I really liked.

SD: You spent 13 years closely entwined in an artistic partnership with Neil Hagerty. How did you meet him?

JH: We were each others best friends for a long time. I grew up in D.C. and graduated high school early, right before I turned 16, which is when I met Neil. Hed lived in D.C. maybe two years at the most, but he grew up in California and Belgium and then went to University of Connecticut for a year and got kicked out. He was playing in a band at the time, but after we met we both moved up to New York.

SD: And you were 15 going on 16?

JH: Uh-huh.

SD: Im surprised your parents let you go.

JH: Yeah, what was going on there? But you know, I didnt feel very young. I felt perfectly capable of surviving wherever I went. Maybe they sensed that.

SD: Have you ever felt that your stage persona intimidates people? That this fierce aura you have might turn people away?

JH: I dont even realize that, you know. When youre in it, youre just in it. But yeah, maybe some people think its too much, or they dont like that, and definitely some people do feel intimidatedwhich is unfortunate. Thats never my intent. My intent is to give everything I have, and in doing so, hope that people will feel invited into a real place. Im the most vulnerable when Im on stage and its odd that it feels intimidating to people. I can understand it, but its strange. Then again, people are made of different stuff. They have different values, come from different places, and you cant expect to be understood or embraced by everybody.

As long as Im communicating to any people any of the time, then thats good.

SD: You just posed for a feature in the "feminism issue" of I.D. magazine. Whats your personal take on feminism?

JH: I think its a huge distraction! Its a market and its a racket; I guess it provides an outlet for females, so to speak, to guide themselves. Men and females are differentyeah, of course! But one is no better that the other. I definitely believe men can do certain things better than females can do, and females can do certain things better than men. There are fundamental differences, but why does there have to be a sect that focuses on the coping of females in life versus males? If as a female you wanna be seen as separate, or differentwhich, by the way, you already arethen go ahead!

I dont think that theres any reason to be separated. Its basically a position of weakness, not a position of strength.

SD: Sometimes it feels like a huge gender war is waging out there. Oprah and her ilk seem to set up men and women into opposite campsits like men are the enemy, and its all about teaching women how to figure them out so they can win.

JH: Yeah, absolutely. It kind of sets this playing field for these different teams where one is supposed to be beating the other. But in nature, genders are both intertwined. I dont get it. It seems to take up so much energy for a lot of people, and I think it does over time permeate peoples consciousness, whether they know it or not. Were all being touched by popular cultureand I sense so much work and effort and words being directed towards something that I dont think is mindful of bigger realities. I think its very shortsighted.

SD: Pop culture has never been more obsessed with marriage and mating, it seems. All these TV shows like The Bachelor and The Bachelorettethat Sex and the City-type hysterical quest for your ideal mateas an artist and as a woman, do you have an antidote to suggest to women (and men!) out there who might feel oppressed by these notions?

JH: All I can say isI probably sound hokey saying it, but those kinds of things come to you. The way you find your perfect mateits not like youre on a hunt! If youre at the core of everything, if you are doing what you wanna be doing and youre doing it on your own terms, to the best of your abilitiesthings fall into place. Putting too much energy into any one thing its only gonna make it that much more elusive, because its getting the whole life balance out of whack. I think first and foremost you gotta be doing what you wanna do. And then if you become dissatisfied or unhappy, then make the changes. Thats pretty much the way I live my life.

SD: I like what you said about that. If you follow your path, the universe seems to conspire to bring things your way.

JH: Thats my only guide in life. Knowing when things have to change, knowing when youre not happy. Not just sitting around and figuring out why youre not happycause that could take forever.

Just make a move, and see where that leads you.

SD: What do you think about marriage?

JH: I think subconsciously people, male and female, wanna get married. Marriage is great, but its also a burden. The security is great, but it can also be a burden to stay within certain boundaries. Then that becomes the definition of your life.

SD: As someone who has been modeling, and has appeared in fashion spreads, what is your take on the digital manipulation that infects fashion and music photography and modeling these days? The crazy amount of fakery that we increasingly base our ideals of sexiness and beauty on?

JH: All I can think of is that someone maybe thought that its better for the economy to have people striving for some kind of unattainable goal. It keeps everybody on the treadmill, keeps em going. But its ridiculous.

From a very young age theres this sense that people that are in magazines and on TV are there because people love them and want them. But the truth is that there could be anybody on that page, or on that TV show. Its never discussed why its this person that looks like this and why that person is seemingly more wanted or more loved than, say, the guy out on the street. Once you start getting into images that are not real, its almost like a carrot on a string that keeps getting farther and farther away.

All the same, theres all sorts of people lobbying for these manipulations.

SD: What do you think is sexyin either a man or a woman?

JH: Somebody whos comfortable in their own skinand confident. Im not talkin about false confidence though. Patience. Intelligence. A sense of humor.

SD: When you date someone, do they have to have an artistic personality?

JH: No, not at all! There have been people in my past and stuff who know nothing about music or art, but I still got along with them. You find that common ground and thats what makes things special.

SD: So youre not one of these musicians who proclaims, "I would never date a lawyer"